


copper and salt

by erebones



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Emotional Constipation, Established Relationship, Friends With Benefits, Frottage, Love Confessions, M/M, Missing Scene, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sort Of, Trans Male Character, Widofjord Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 00:35:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19262386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erebones/pseuds/erebones
Summary: "I appreciate you" and what follows.





	copper and salt

**Author's Note:**

> Belated fic for day 2 of Widofjord Week: intimacy! A follow-up to "needle in a haystack" but can be read on its own. Fjord and Caleb are in a casual sexual relationship and starting to admit their deeper feelings to themselves. Fjord is a trans man in this fic.
> 
> Thanks to losebetter for the beta <3333

“Fjord.”

Caleb lies awake, staring at the ceiling, counting his own breaths and the breaths of the man lying in bed next to him. If he’s timed it correctly, Fjord should be on the verge of sleep—just drifting off, just _barely_ unconscious, so that if Caleb has second thoughts he can pretend Fjord was hearing things. They have spent the night a few times, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean he’s quite ready to confess the depth of his feelings.

“I… appreciate you.”

Fjord mumbles something and rubs his eyes. A little more awake than Caleb had thought, then. “Hm?”

Caleb half-smiles into the darkness, a bit wild-eyed. Tries to grasp for that thread of courage he feels whenever Fjord looks at him with fondness in the yellow depths of his eyes. “Sometimes… you have to get a little bit crazy,” he whispers. A memory. A _call-back_ , though his memory tells him it’s somewhat paraphrased.

“What—you mean right now?” Fjord asks, sounding less bleary by the second. “You tryin’ to get into my pants, Widogast?”

Caleb huffs. The fearsome spell is broken and all he feels is warmth and fond irritation. “I was trying to be sincere with you, Fjord. But if such things are unwelcome we needn’t continue the conversation.”

There’s a pause, and Caleb feels a hand fumbling for his under the blankets. In silence he grips Fjord’s broad palm, creased with lines and salt, calloused and worn. Familiar. “I’m sorry,” Fjord murmurs. “Just tryin’ to put you at ease.”

“I _am_ at ease.”

“Really? Seems like your tense as that copper wire of yours, all coiled up.” Fjord brushes his thumb over Caleb’s knuckles. “Got a lot of nervous energy…”

Caleb exhales loudly through his nose and stares sightlessly at the dark ceiling. “A lot has happened in the last several hours. I am just… processing.”

“Well.” There’s a faint creak as the mattress shifts under Fjord’s weight. “If you need help sortin’ through it, I’m here.”

“You were sleeping,” Caleb says, regretful. “I woke you.”

“I don’t mind.” Fjord releases his hand and shifts, turning onto his side with one arm bent beneath his head. The other reaches across the mattress. Rests proprietary on Caleb’s sternum. Caleb breathes in and relishes the weight of it. The calm that floods his bones in answer.

He can’t see for shit, but he can sense the weight of Fjord leaning over him, taste the faintest exhale from Fjord’s lips. “I can back off,” Fjord whispers, “if you want.”

Caleb doesn’t reply. Just reaches up, wraps his arms around Fjord’s neck, and pulls him down. He’s blind, and his kiss smears across Fjord’s chin before homing in to his laughing mouth. Caleb pokes him in the chest. “Don’t laugh.”

Fjord sucks his lower lip into his mouth and lets it drag against his teeth a little before releasing him. “But you’re funny.”

“Hmph.”

Another kiss, more centered this time. “And grumpy.”

“ _Hmm_!” He tries to convey his disapproval through empty syllables, but it’s difficult with Fjord’s hands on his ribs. Caleb squirms beneath his weight and works a thigh between Fjord’s legs. Fjord isn’t wearing much to bed—smallclothes and a worn sleeveless tunic that’s paperthin between Caleb’s fingers—and he can feel the heat and damp of his cunt against his thigh.

Fjord whimpers and licks softly at Caleb’s lower lip until he opens and welcomes him into his mouth. The taste of him is familiar by now, even slightly stale with sleep, punctuated by the scrape and bite of new teeth. Fjord is painstaking when he kisses him, more so lately than the occasional times they’d fallen into bed together before, careful of his tusks. Part of Caleb wants to resist it, push against the gentleness and provoke pain. But tenderness is new to him and Fjord both, and he’s come to regard it as something worth preserving.

The kiss deepens. Their bodies cleave together under the sheets, growing warm and damp with sweat. Fjord moans into his mouth and shifts, humping his leg a few times before subsiding. Caleb growls and paws at his hips. “Yes,” he whispers against his jaw, “let me feel you, _bärchen_.”

“Are you sure?” Without waiting for an answer, Fjord sucks a gentle mark into the side of his throat and spreads his legs a little wider. His hips surge forward like the tide, dragging a damp patch along Caleb’s sleep pants. With a muffled curse, Caleb fumbles between their bodies and gets a fistful of Fjord’s smalls.

“Absolutely.” He turns his wrist and works his hand into the minimal space between Fjord’s pubic bone and his own thigh; finds his clit standing erect in his underwear and gives it a good rub. Fjord garbles out a curse and bucks into his hand. “I owe you one, I think, yeah?” He pushes gently at Fjord’s broad shoulders until the half-orc withdraws, a pitiful whine in the back of his throat, and sprawls on his back on the rumpled sheets. “May I take your clothes off, sweet?”

“Please,” Fjord rasps. He’s already tugging at the hem of his shirt. Caleb palms his dick as he watches him struggle out of it, hot in the face. Fjord is so bloody gorgeous all the time, but especially when he’s desperate like this. Unselfconscious. Limbs extended in every direction, chest heaving, thighs pressed together as he chases the smallest scrap of sensation.

The room is too dim to see much, even though his eyes have adjusted, so Caleb leans down and kisses his brow. “I’m going to light a candle, okay?”

Fjord gulps. “All right.”

Caleb rises from the bed, a bit weak in the knees, and takes a moment to breathe deeply and calm himself. He sheds his nightshirt and pants and pads naked to the hearth, where he lights two candles with the last of the burning coals. He walks them back to the bedside table with slow, quivering steps. When he turns back to the bed he can see Fjord more clearly on his back, knees spread, petting his cunt with two locked fingers, mindful of his claws and hypnotically slow. Caleb’s mouth waters.

“You comin’ or what?”

“Not just yet.” Caleb kneels up on the bed and smooths his hands along the paler green stretch of Fjord’s inner thighs. Fjord’s toes curl against the mattress. “Hands above your head.”

Fjord licks his lips. “Bossy,” he mutters, but his voice is a rasp that breaks in the middle as he drapes his wrists over his head. Caleb rewards him with a soft, close-mouthed kiss to the crook of his knee. “Cay…”

“Hmm?”

Fjord’s nostrils flare at the slow drag of Caleb’s palm along his thigh. “What about that IOU?”

“We’re getting there. Patience.” Another kiss, this one a little higher up. He can smell Fjord’s musk, rich and salty, and he digs his teeth in a little on the next one, sucking a nice symmetrical bruise right where the upper clasp of his thigh-high boot sits.

“Caleb, _please_ —”

With a little laugh Caleb finally settles on his stomach, though he purposely turns his head to nuzzle and kiss at Fjord’s thighs a little longer, curling his arms around them to anchor himself. He leans up to kiss the slight softness of his belly, gentility over a core of solid strength, and Fjord whines.

“Easy, _bärchen_ , I have you.”

Fjord’s diaphragm heaves as he pants for breath. “Cay, please. I wanna touch you.”

“Mmm. _Ja,_ I think we can manage that.”

With a little exhale of relief, Fjord resettles his shoulders, petting one hand through Caleb’s hair. “You should put this back so I can see you.”

“See me what?” Caleb asks, cheeky.

Fjord’s hand tightens infinitesimally in his hair. “Eat me out.”

It’s almost a command. The energy of it shivers down Caleb’s spine like an electric current. “Hang on,” he says, fumbling with the leather thong tied loosely around his wrist. He kneels up and drags his hair back into an approximation of a horsetail, keenly aware of his erection standing proudly from between his legs. It seems to pulse with every beat of his heart, a thread of arousal drawing tighter and tighter around the core of him—or maybe it’s the delicate flex of his muscles as he struggles to maintain his balance on his knees.

When he tries to lay back down again, Fjord intercepts him with hands to his arms. He draws him up, up, sitting to meet him halfway in a sloppy kiss. Caleb sucks enthusiastically on his tongue and gets a hand around his cock for his efforts.

“ _Hnn_ …”

Fjord laughs again, and Caleb kisses the smile right off his face, hips jerking roughly into his grip. “Easy,” Fjord murmurs, gentling.

“I thought,” Caleb gasps, “you wanted my mouth on you.”

“I do,” Fjord croons in a soothing rumble. He runs the pad of his thumb over his cockhead, spreading precum, teasing the clutch of his frenulum. Caleb quivers and buries his face in the welcoming crook of Fjord’s neck. “Doesn’t seem fair to leave you wanting, that’s all.”

“I want you all the time,” Caleb mumbles, flummoxed by arousal and the hot creeping flush of Fjord’s body so near his own. Fjord’s hand slows. Caleb flinches, blinks awake—pulls back before he can say anything else so foolish. “Lie down,” he says quickly, not quite making eye contact. “Please.”

“Cay…”

“I said _lie down._ ” The snap of authority does what a quiet plea could not—Fjord’s pupils blow wide and dark and he lays back obediently, shuffling a bit on the pillows to get settled. Caleb leans down and nips at his belly; follows the trail of hair to his cunt and slides his fingers gently between the folds. He’s hot and slick and practically throbbing, and the slightest touch has Fjord muffling cries into his arm. Caleb parts him with his thumbs and leans in.

He drags his tongue up slow from hole to clit and lingers there, licking firm, unhurried circles as Fjord trembles around him. Caleb’s suddenly grateful he shaved earlier—it gives him the freedom to press as close as he needs to, lips around Fjord’s erection, chin digging into his perineum. Hands turned to claws in the meat of his thighs. Caleb moans around a mouthful of cunt and rocks his hips against the mattress. He’s so hard he can barely think. Just lick and nuzzle and suck, reduced to base instinct as he eats Fjord out like he’s his last meal.

Then Fjord’s hand finds his hair and he goes rigid. Gently, so gently, Fjord’s claws drag with care against his scalp, then fasten in the loose knot he’d tied it in. And press him close. Deeper. Caleb mouths at him, sloppy and open, struggling to get one hand beneath him. He manages it, somehow, and sinks two fingers straight into Fjord’s body.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Fjord whispers, and goes taut. It takes all of Caleb’s negligible strength to keep his wrist steady as Fjord’s body ripples around his hand once, twice. He sucks with more determination and is rewarded with a sharp cry and a gush of ejaculate against his chin.

“Good boy,” he murmurs. He drags an open-mouthed kiss along the strung-wire stretch of the tendon in Fjord’s pelvis and fucks him deep, steady, matching the rise and fall of Fjord’s chest.

“Please… Caleb, please, I want—”

Caleb bows his head. Fjord’s sensitive now, on a hair-trigger. He tongues the apex of him in a slow spiral, speeding up as Fjord’s whimpers climb in pitch, and again Fjord’s body clasps him tight as he cums around Caleb’s hand. Caleb hums approval and wriggles lower to tongue at his entrance. His nose presses incidentally to Fjord’s clit, dragging a deep, guttural sigh out of him. Caleb smiles and does it again.

“Cay—fuck, darlin’, I’m gonna—”

Caleb hums loudly, and that vibration is enough to push Fjord over another edge. His cries are deep and muffled—when Caleb glances up, Fjord is holding a pillow to his face as he shudders, knees digging into Caleb’s ribs. Caleb rubs his thumb between his folds, where it’s wet and smooth. “You’re doing so well,” he murmurs, voice gone rough and lips gleaming with slick. “How you feeling, _schatz_?”

“Mmgh.” Fjord lowers the pillow and peers overtop of it. Hair sticks to his forehead with sweat and despite the dark room, Caleb knows he’s flushed—can feel the heat radiating off him like a blazing bonfire. “Good… real good.” He reaches down and wipes his own cum from Caleb’s face; slips his fingers in after for Caleb to suck on. Caleb laps the salt from Fjord’s claws and groans at the slight scrape as they drag against his tongue. “How about you, sweetheart?”

“Good—nnf…” Caleb drops his forehead to Fjord’s thigh and ruts against the mattress. His erection hasn’t subsided at all in the last few minutes, and he doesn’t think it’ll take long to take care of it.

“Easy. C’mere…” With shaky hands, Fjord pulls him bodily upward until they’re face to face. Fjord grips his chin and studies his face with a look of smug satisfaction. “Kiss me.”

“Sure?”

“Definitely.”

Caleb kisses him, mouth still wet and tasting of Fjord. He is cradled in warmth and sturdy softness—Fjord’s arms around him, Fjord’s thighs bracketing his own. His cock slides naturally along Fjord’s vulva and he groans, grinding against the slick heat.

Fjord nips at his lower lip. “That’s it, darlin’.” He digs his fingers into Caleb’s hips to urge him on, sharp and grounding where his claws prick Caleb’s skin. Caleb braces his hands against the mattress and gasps for breath, head hanging between his shoulders as he watches his cock slide against Fjord’s clit. “Gonna make me cum,” he promises in a wild whisper, a little delirious and a _lot_ turned on, a freshly stoked flame.

“Again?” Caleb marvels, more impressed than jealous. He remembers their early days fondly, when they’d fallen into bed together on the road out of necessity and camaraderie—remembers figuring out how Fjord liked to be touched, how desperate they both were after years and years of loneliness. That desperation has faded a little, but he feels the fraying edges of it now, creeping up on his heaving shoulders as he ruts between Fjord’s legs, chasing orgasm. He bows his head and Fjord meets him halfway, lips grazing, gasping as Fjord’s brow crumples and he gives a muffled shout at the final peak.

“Fuck,” Fjord sighs, when the tremors subside. He doesn’t push Caleb away, but he wraps a hand around Caleb’s dick and Caleb knows he’s had enough. He kneels up, bracing himself on Fjord’s thighs, and fucks into his grip before finally finding his own release all over Fjord’s stomach.

With a long, satiated sigh, Caleb slumps forward and burrows into Fjord’s broad chest. Fjord shakes a little with quiet laughter and gathers him into his arms. Caleb kisses his sternum where his heartbeat still thrums rapidly. “How’s that for an IOU?”

Fjord hums into his hair. “More than made up for fingering me in a freezing cold barn, thank you.”

“You _wanted_ me to finger you in a freezing cold barn.”

“Hmm. That’s true.” Gentle claws drag shallow up his spine, unrepentant. “You do have awfully nice hands.”

“ _Danke_.”

“And hey.” Fjord’s arm slides over his back and holds him close as a cold-tipped nose nudges into his hairline. “I appreciate you, too.”

The words are thick with everything Fjord isn’t saying—the weight of it falls over Caleb like a blanket, comforting in its ambiguity. Whether Fjord is holding back for Caleb’s comfort, or for his own, Caleb isn’t sure. But he appreciates it either way. There will be time for bold confessions, and in the meantime this comfortable solidarity will see him through the cold nights.

Fjord’s hand squeezes his waist. “That all right?”

“Hmm?”

“Our… mutual appreciation.” Fjord sounds like he’s laughing. Not _at_ Caleb, but with him. Caleb pokes him inelegantly in the side and Fjord yelps, flinching underneath his weight.

“You are getting silly,” he says sternly, as if he were innocent of the same crime.

“It’s been a long day,” Fjord defends himself. A gentle kiss is pressed to the dewy plane of his temple. “Go to sleep, Cay. You’ve earned it.”

Caleb mumbles something about Fjord being a better pillow than a confidant, but he doesn’t mean it. The last thing he feels before falling asleep is a kiss to the top of the head and a soft, barely-there hum deep in Fjord’s chest, like the strains of a sea-shanty echoing faintly down a distant wharf.


End file.
